Portuguese Colonial Military in India (eBook)

This book explores and analyzes developments in the military institution, military engagements as well as the larger security environment of (including non-war violence and maritime regions linking to) the Portuguese Empire in India. These developments occurred under the onslaught of the early modern globalization. The research shows that far from being dilapidated or archaic, the Portuguese colonial military there kept up with some developments in technology and organization in a competitive environment. Although the colonial military was not the most important reason in accounting for the survival of the Portuguese Estado da Índia, nor was the military profession the most lucrative occupation, the Portuguese experience gave indication of how a colonial state and society was able to survive against coalescing threats from the position of weakness. Located in the period and geographical region of the wax and waning of the Mughal and Maratha empires, Portuguese India was not necessarily a more violent place than the surrounding territories although resistance to and uprising against the Portuguese was usually underestimated. Beginning from the attempt at political and military centralization (and standardization) in the eighteenth century, the abolition of the army of the Estado da Índia in the nineteenth marked nominally the end of an era that may have a reverberation on the pacifist perception of Goa today.

Teddy Sim is involved in research extending from the doctoral work he does on the Portuguese enterprise in the East centering on colonial India in the eighteenth century, of which he has published related papers and the book Portuguese Enterprise in the East: Survival in the Years 1707-57 (2011). He is also the editor of Piracy and surreptitious activities in Malay Archipelago and adjacent regions (2014), and Maritime Defense of China: Ming General Qi Jiguang (2017).

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This book explores and analyzes developments in the military institution, military engagements as well as the larger security environment of (including non-war violence and maritime regions linking to) the Portuguese Empire in India. These developments occurred under the onslaught of the early modern globalization. The research shows that far from being dilapidated or archaic, the Portuguese colonial military there kept up with some developments in technology and organization in a competitive environment. Although the colonial military was not the most important reason in accounting for the survival of the Portuguese Estado da India, nor was the military profession the most lucrative occupation, the Portuguese experience gave indication of how a colonial state and society was able to survive against coalescing threats from the position of weakness. Located in the period and geographical region of the wax and waning of the Mughal and Maratha empires, Portuguese India was not necessarily a more violent place than the surrounding territories although resistance to and uprising against the Portuguese was usually underestimated. Beginning from the attempt at political and military centralization (and standardization) in the eighteenth century, the abolition of the army of the Estado da India in the nineteenth marked nominally the end of an era that may have a reverberation on the pacifist perception of Goa today.